WeTried Translations
Translator: ZEROSUGAR
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Regression is Too Much
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Chapter 260
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The regressor is troubled (7)
There was a time, once, when I asked Choi Ji-won something.
"Ji-won."
"Hm?"
"You have Heart of Lightning Flash, right? Doesn't it hurt a lot when you use it?"
"It hurts."
She pouted her lips like she couldn't believe I even had to ask.
"My whole body sizzles and boils... it hurts like hell. If it weren't for Bung-bung, it would've gotten in the way of moving properly."
"That bad?"
If Choi Ji-won called something "hurts like hell," that meant it genuinely hurt. This was a woman who didn't even flinch when hot oil splattered on her while cooking. Her pain threshold was on a different scale entirely from normal people.
But that made my question grow bigger, not smaller.
"But Ji-won. You basically activate Heart of Lightning Flash before every fight, don't you?"
"...Yeah?"
"Is there a reason for that?"
"..."
She didn't answer, just grinned.
"You'll understand once you try it yourself."
I hadn't understood back then. But right now, in this moment, I understood exactly what Choi Ji-won meant.
Whoosh!
A chunk of steel the size of a human head shot straight for the space between my eyebrows. Normally, when something that heavy comes flying at you, dodging is the easiest option, blocking is the next easiest, and catching it without letting it explode on impact is the hardest by far.
But all I did was raise my right hand. Fingers spread wide, arm extended as far as it would go.
Thump.
I caught the cannonball with one hand, gentle as if I were drawing it toward my body.
"Easy."
A moment ago, I'd had a cannon fired at myself as an experiment, and I'd caught the shot with a single hand. That kind of feat needs Strength, technique, and reaction speed all peaking at once. Nobody pulls that off casually.
Was I originally this strong? Not a chance.
My technique, honestly, was probably top-tier among humanity, but not catching-cannonballs-with-one-hand tier. This was only possible because my Strength and reaction speed had shot far past any normal threshold.
"So this is Heart of Eternal Winter..."
Heart of Eternal Winter. Now that I'd activated it myself, I understood why Choi Ji-won relied on it so much. My body didn't feel like my own. Refreshing, overflowing with power, honed to a razor's edge.
My vision was so sharp I could count the pores on my own skin. My muscles felt both loose and unshakably firm. Reaction speed? Time itself seemed to slow down. And on top of all that, mana boiled inside me, cold enough to genuinely earn the name "eternal winter."
Judging by mana alone, this was strong enough to leave most players gasping for breath. Judging by the body alone, this was fierce enough to crush enemies through raw physical stats. And with mana and body both hitting their peak at the same time, this was flat-out invincible. It felt like I'd reached forward in time and dragged a future version of myself back here.
If I ever activated Heart of Eternal Winter in reality.
"I don't think I'd lose."
Tiger? Bring it on. That dragon thing appearing in America? It could wait its turn too. Screw it. Just screw it. Anything that crossed me would die that day. Beating Choi Ji-won might not even be a dream anymore. Heart of Eternal Winter was an S+-grade trait, a tier above S-grade. For someone who'd never had an aggressive trait until now, it was a lifeline opening up a whole new set of possibilities.
Oh, and I should mention, there was one very small problem here.
"...If I could actually use it, that is."
I couldn't use this in reality. The strain it put on my body was no joke.
Every drop of blood in my body would have frozen solid if not for the training ground. Never mind my muscles, eyes, or skin. The mana was so overwhelming it was actively damaging my own body. Even with an A-grade trait like Chill Affinity, this was still the result.
Someone might say, "Can't you just reinforce your body with mana?" Fair point. Spreading strengthened mana throughout the body does significantly boost durability. But the mana itself was the thing hurting me, so pumping more mana into my body made no sense to begin with. And it worked even less on places like the heart, where mana already naturally pooled.
Actually, the heart was the real problem. This cold mana caused cardiac arrest once you used it past a certain threshold, so what would happen if I used Heart of Eternal Winter? Obviously my heart would seize in shock. And I'd regress.
"The only real option I've got left is..."
Maybe if the Hero trait stacked massively, the way it did during the Tutorial, I could actually use this. Judging from that experience, if I got strong enough, my body might be able to hold up.
"I've actually got a decent number of useful traits these days."
My mental state had gotten a lot better recently, and honestly, that was probably thanks to Right Mindfulness and Meditation. Curiosity and Awe had been useful too. And Girl's Cheer had gotten me through Floor 25 in one piece.
Anyway, that was the end of my research into Heart of Eternal Winter. I had a rough sense of how to use it now. Ready to deploy it whenever the right moment came, or so I figured.
So was that it? Just going to practice swordsmanship now? No. There was still one thing left.
"Flash Step."
I needed to test out my second S-grade trait.
-Flash Step [S]
'By the time you see it, it's already too late.'
This is a movement technique that utilizes extreme tempo control. It consumes a large amount of mana to enable momentary super-speed movement. However, the movement distance is affected by proficiency.
Knees bent. Mana spinning through my whole body. Muscles loosened like a sprinter right before the gun, holding a state of absolute focus.
"Hup!"
I pushed off with everything I had, and my vision briefly warped. When I came back to my senses, I'd moved about a hundred meters. It happened in an instant.
"Cool. Genuinely cool."
In wuxia novels, the protagonists always have some flashy footwork technique. A footwork technique that let you dodge every attack while landing every one of your own.
I'd figured Flash Step would turn out to be a solid, reliable footwork skill like something out of those novels. But actually using it, it wasn't quite that.
If I had to sum up Flash Step in one word, "chicken rib" felt about right. Good, but not good, in the sense that it was miserably hard to use in an actual fight.
Covering a huge distance in an instant, sure, that part was great. If I focused, I could cross dozens or even hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye. To anyone on the receiving end, it looked like I'd simply appeared out of nowhere. That was exactly what Flash Step did. Nothing beat it for an ambush.
So why wasn't I using a busted trait like this all the time? Because of the annoying conditions I mentioned earlier.
I had to set my stance. I had to focus. It ate a huge chunk of mana. None of those conditions were easy to pull off mid-combat. I couldn't even remember properly using Flash Step since Floor 2.
In a fight where every second counted, when was I supposed to focus, bend my knees, and loosen my muscles? If I could trigger Flash Step in the middle of combat, that would mean I was already winning so hard I didn't even need it. It would mean I already held an overwhelming advantage.
"Hmm..."
How had the master of the city, back on Floor 2, used this so freely? Maybe because it combined with Heart of Lightning Flash? Now that I thought about it, had I actually taught this to Ji-won at some point? My memory was getting fuzzy.
No, no. Enough with the stray thoughts. I needed to figure out how to make this actually useful. There was no doubt this was a great technique in its own right. It hit with absolute force whenever I could land the first strike. The real question was how to use it in more general situations.
The biggest obstacle was the drain on focus and the required stance. Was there no way to carve out a sliver of breathing room mid-fight?
"But if I had that kind of room, I'd just attack instead."
There wasn't really a reason to force Flash Step in there. In that same window of time, swinging my sword one more time might just be the better move.
Oh, for the record, Flash Step wasn't teleportation, it was super-high-speed movement, so if I misjudged it, I could hurt myself too.
So, back to the drawing board. If Flash Step was best suited for ambushes, what if I built an environment where I could keep ambushing over and over?
What if I spread chill across a wide area, thick enough to limit visibility like fog, and kept creating situations where only I could strike first?
"Would it get caught by their mana sense, though."
That was worth testing. I'd have to ask Ji-won to help out later. Though if other players' mana could see straight through my "fog," the whole plan wouldn't mean much.
Any other... any other use for this... something that could bury the downside of needing a long window of time in combat... something...
"Time?"
Did the focus period really need to be long?
What if I compressed this "charge time" down to the extreme? Like... 0.1 seconds. No, even shorter, something like 0.01 seconds. And instead of setting the full Flash Step stance, what if I just bent my knees slightly for a moment?
Obviously, I wouldn't be able to cover the same long distance as before. Maybe just a tiny sliver of movement. Probably around 20 centimeters.
But in the middle of a split-second exchange, in the kind of standoff where two skilled fighters sliced the timing thinner and thinner in a mental chess match, if I could suddenly shift by even a hand's width... wouldn't that actually be usable?
I naturally pictured a combat scenario and swung my sword.
"Now."
For the briefest instant, I bent my knees like I was faking an attack, and triggered a heavily simplified version of Flash Step.
Fwoosh!
I moved about 10 centimeters, even shorter than the 20 I'd expected. Moving 10 centimeters by itself didn't matter. What mattered was that it counted as "super-high-speed movement."
My own personal application of Flash Step.
"...This'll work even better against skilled fighters."
I could absolutely make use of this.
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